"How to Use A Textbook" Chapter 6

Focus on Academic Vocabulary

This section of the chapter explaining Researcher Isabel Beck’s thoughts on the three tiers of vocabulary really helped me have a concrete understanding of this acquisition. I was just working on a “curriculum triage” assignment that contained a section where I had to select specific vocabulary that I thought should be a focus and words that we didn’t need to emphasize. Having these tiers would have made that a very clear task. Looking back many of the words we chose to keep would be Tier 2 words that are more common words. The most crucial thing about Tier 2 words I noticed was that they can be used across domains. The examples given opened up my mind to better see just how many words this applies to. The focus words I selected included matter, atom, and structure. When looking at the vocabulary to discard I let go of things like alpha decay and isotope. Now I can recognize these are vocabulary that, while potentially important to building conceptual knowledge in this specific unit, would not come up in everyday conversations even with educated adults. This perfectly classifies them as Tier 3. This section gave me a great framework for this assignment. When I am actually preparing to teach a class and looking at standards this is going to be helpful. 

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